In observance of Juneteenth, the University Libraries will host an online screening and discussion of “Hidden in Full View.”
The event, which is 9 to 10:30 a.m. June 20, will take place via Zoom. It will feature Chares Chavis Jr., producer and co-writer of the film and director of the John Mitchell Jr. Program for History, Justice and Race at George Mason University.
Chavis is the national co-chair of the U.S. Movement for Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation, which includes a call to create an Archive of Racial and Cultural Healing. The effort is supported by the Association of Research Libraries, of which the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Libraries is a member.
Registration to participate in the screening is required. The discussion will include the role of community archives and libraries in preserving local history and events.
“Hidden in Full View” is a short documentary that reconstructs the lynching of 23-year-old Matthew Williams in Salisbury, Maryland. It is the first in a series that tells the stories of descendants and witnesses to such events.
Chavis has followed up the film with his book, “The Silent Shore: The Lynching of Matthew Williams and the Politics of Racism in the Free State” (John Hopkins University Press, 2022). The book draws on the discovery of previously unreleased documents to reconstruct the full story of Williams’s murder and the legacy of “modern-day lynching.”
